After the sombre, downbeat post about Bethany I thought I’d post the ultimate in feel-good songs.
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen).
Genius.
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Archive for May, 2008
31MayHappy Time
31MayA Good Cause…
A poster at Overclockers called Skywalker has recently been told he has to wait months for his daughter, Bethany, to have an MRI scan, something which isn’t good at all.
Bethany has tuberous-sclerosis which means that she will suffer from the following for the rest of her life:
- Epilepsy
- Skin problems
- Learning difficulties
- Development problems
- Speech problems
With the possibility of
- Kidney problems
- Eye problems
- Lung problems
Bethany was only 18 months old at the time she was diagnosed, at a time when it was assumed she merely had Epilepsy, as you can see, it’s a lot worse than that. As time has gone by things haven’t gotten any easier, Bethany is now fitting up to seven times a day, including in her sleep, and if this wasn’t bad enough, Skywalker and his wife have another child, Brandon, who has ADHD and OCD.
Below are the updates ranging from 17th April 2007 to the latest, 29th May 2008.
With this, donations can be offered to help Bethany, for the details please, click here.
I only went and got Rock Band! I actually got it on Friday, but never played it until Saturday, where I played it at my friend Stephens house, playing at his whilst his girlfriend went to see Girls Aloud. It was an all night affair 
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Well, it’s just a bit fun! It really is. For me the song list is a lot stronger all round that Guitar Hero 2 or 3, unfortunately it does miss the killer anthems from them, those being Sweet Child ‘O Mine, Freebird and One, but some of the songs in Rock Band are fantastic anyway coupled with the fact most of them are Master editions, meaning sung and performed by the original artist (as opposed to cover versions which made up the majority of Guitar Hero games).
On top of the selection we also had the US Rock Band store ported over, so we had 110 songs to choose from from day 1 and with me having a few free points from my Grand Theft Auto IV purchase I went straight to the store and purchased an additional song from my favourite band, The Hives, with one of my favourite songs, Die, Alright! Fan-bloomin’-tastic.
I’ve pretty much been playing this none-stop with friends, so I’ve not got far through the solo campaign and I’ve not unlocked as many songs as I’d have liked, it’s been slow going, we’ve just got as far as Enter Sandman by Metallica which is ACE!
One thing this game has done though is allowed me to appreciate just how hard a drummer works, this is far from a professional drum set but it’s still utterly knackering! The drums in question are actually too loud, ridiculously so, so I really am contemplating getting some pads to quieten it. Worryingly Wyrdo, a member from OcUK has had his bass pedal crack, so that’s not good news at all, hopefully the RTM service is good.
Included in the boxset is a Microphone (not my tool of choice as I have absolutely zero singing ability), a Stratocaster Guitar which feels much better than the Guitar Hero 2 guitar, sadly it doesn’t have the clicky strum bar I like from the Xplorer guitar and finally the drumset which has a build quality far beyond my expectations. Currently it lives up to expectations but it’s gonna take a lot of practice because without practicing the guitar from GH2 I currently suck ass and can only fumble through hard and the drums are tricky, but I’ve finally become consistent on medium.
Back to Rock Band… Toodles.
28MaySome Joker..
I’ve had some right joker spamming comments to the blog because he’s banned from Overclockers… not the way to get your account back, you get banned for a reason after all…
So unfortunately I’ve had to add moderation to the comments much like Kainz’ blog, so now I am accepting comments from people. Anything that’s not spam will get accepted, anything derogatory or unnecessary won’t.
Hopefully he’ll sort his attitude out eventually and I can make comments instant again, a sad state of affairs, unfortunately it’s become a necessary measure.
22MayOh… My… God…
We bloody did it! We’re the Champions of Europe as well as Domestic Champions. We’re now the only team in the English Premier League to win both at the same time, doing it twice!
But I must say, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so nervous watching a match, it was a brilliant game and I’d have loved to be there, sadly without a job it was impossible, maybe next year .
The game started with us completely dominating Chelsea, finally making the break through with a goal from *shock* Cristiano Ronaldo, placing a fantastic header from a fantastic Wes Brown left footed cross. We almost made it 2-0 shortly after only for Cech to make two fantastic saves, first from a Carlos Tevez diving header, then from a Michael Carrick 20 yard strike from the follow up. Shortly after that Tevez should have made it 2-0, but couldn’t get a strong contact on what was pretty much an open goal.
Surprisingly Chelsea equalised thanks to a double deflection (Chelsea’s style) which fell to Frank Lampard who finished really well past Ferdinand and Van Der Sar, both of whom were fractions away from stopping it.
The second half was a completely different matter, the goal against the run of play clearly gave Chelsea real confidence and they completely out played us in the second half, but we defended brilliantly, though we were rescued after Didier Drogba hit the post from a 20 yard bending strike – a life saver – and it went to Extra-Time.
It was nail biting time and it wasn’t the usual dull affair, both teams clearly wanted to win. Man Utd started to come back into the ascendency, Frank Lampard hit the crossbar from a swiveling effort from Chelsea’s best move of the match, and John Terry cleared one off the line after Giggs, breaking the all time appearance record for Man Utd, had the chance to almost certainly wrap the match up.
So at 1-1 after 120 minutes it went to the lottery of a penalty shoot out, Man Utd went into it having already beaten Chelsea on Penalties in the Community Shield, but also with the history of Alex Ferguson having never lead a team to a win on Penalties in a major match and there is no worse way of losing a match than being on penalties, so it was a bad time to be a Man Utd fan, but it was bloody exciting!
Thankfully after all the drama had gone we ended up victorious after John Terry hit the post for Chelsea after Ronaldo had a penalty saved, and Van Der Sar saving from Anelka, the result of which is that we are now officially the best team in Europe (something I’ve claimed all season) and undoubtedly the best team in England. The greedy side of me believes we should have emulated the side of ’99 in winning the treble but we were robbed by abysmal refereeing, but the European and Domestic double is still a phenomenal achievement.
Awesome.
And with that I leave you with 2 .gif files of the embarassment that is Joe Cole (asshole).
21MayThe Big Night
Tonight’s the night, the UEFA Champions League final 2008 and it’s Manchester United against Chelsea.
There don’t seem to be any injury problems, there are rumours regarding Vidic’ fitness, but Fergie has stated it’s that he trained away from the group on a seperate training schedule, probably something to combat Didier Drogba’s aerial prescence.
To say I’m nervous is an understatement, I’m absolutely bricking it!
I’m expecting a negative game, with us employing the same solid, but uncreative midfield we’ve utilised well in Europe, but not so well domestically (ironically, against Chelsea), leaving Ronaldo isolated, Carrick too deep and Rooney out on one of the wings, losing his rag and picking up a silly booking (or worse).
Chelsea on the other hand will stick to what they know and what has worked, route one, massive long balls throught to Drogba for other players to play off and set-piece play (which is where I worry about us defensively). I’ve always said, if we go and attack Chelsea I’m confident we’d win, but with so much at stake I don’t see us taking that risk.
Either way, I’m hoping we’ll win it (obviously), but winning the league was the big one and my major fear was being pipped for both by Chelsea which would have been devastating leaving us with nothing despite playing the best football all season.
I probably sound very negative myself, ironic considering I know Ferguson for his negative tactics, but I always am before these big games.
It’s 40 years since we first won the European Cup (becoming the first English team to do so) and 50 years since the Munich disaster. So I’m hoping the same fates that shone down on us in 1999 are with us tonight, it would be the perfect way to remember the Munich disaster, especially after the disgrace of a performance that was against Manchester City in February.
21MayMy Whereabouts…
I’ve had a few questions as to my whereabouts, not just from my lack of updates on my blog, but my lack of response through e-mails and lack of prescence on Overclockers forums.
The answer is actually an easy one, my XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra finally went to graphics card heaven. Anyone who knows me personally or what it is that I do, knows that my graphics card has actually been on its way out for some 18 months, it originally started artifacting in games just before I moved house (January 31st 2007), leaving me unable to play games anymore. After that, video files and DVD’s were next to stop working DVD’s stopped completely, video files would have red dots all over them for extended periods.
Despite this I was happy to continue with it as oddly, 3D Studio Max continued to work fine, however, around 10 days ago it gave up the ghost and wouldn’t render anymore in either Direct 3D or OpenGL, so it needed replacing, STAT!
I’d already enquired about a week or two earlier on IRC in the ocuk-consoles channel (which is sadly dwindling in numbers, so join it!) and Streeteh had recently upgraded his 7800GTX for an 8800GT so I told him to name a price, he did and it was too good not to accept, but I had to wait until he was home from University to post it, thankfully I finally got the graphics card on Monday, and installed it and it works perfectly, so I’m back around on here, OcUK and anywhere else I may be needed :p.
So that’s where I’ve been Twinblade! 
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